Van Helsinki: The Hunt
by nototter
Summary: In the wake of his return to service after the Grand Hiatus, Van Helsinki must search for his former companion Professor Jenny Ford, who has disappeared.
1. Chapter 1

When the phone rings at 3am, it's never good news. Van rolled over in his bed and picked up the phone. It was the Inspector.

'Yeah…what it is?' Van asked. There was silence on the line for a moment.

'We've got a problem, Van.' It was the Inspector. 'We've got a big problem.'

'And? I'm still unofficially on sick-leave, why do you need me?' questioned Van, snappy at being disturbed. Wasn't he supposed to be grieving?

'It's Ford.'

'What of her?' asked Van, but the Inspector's tone didn't bode well.

'She's missing. She's gone.'

'What?'. Van actually started to his feet at this, despite the pain that ran along his side as he did.

'She disappeared about two days ago. We've heard nothing. No note, no calls, nothing. We're treating it as suspicious.'

'Of course it's bloody suspicious, you fool. What can you tell me? Anything? Anything at all?'

'Van, calm down. Look, I can't see you. You can't even officially know about this. You're in the shit list again, like after the Loren Case. You can't say anything to anyone. But I'll give you this. Ford lived on 22nd Fox Street. She kept her keys under the red flowerpot behind the house. The bureau's full up with work, Van. I can't do anything. You're on your own. They'll be an official investigation, but…you know how the rest of the bureau sees us. We're the oddballs, the nutters, the guys who find aliens. I don't think they'll find anything. I'm relying on you, Van. Don't screw it up.' The phone clicked off.

Van waited for a moment, mobile still to his ear. Then he slammed the phone down on the table next to him, and opened his door, throwing his clothes, trying to lose himself in it. It didn't work. He had to find her. He had to. Van pulled his issued SIG-Sauer P228 from his trousers and shoved it into the holster on his side. Then he returned to his room and gathered together a selection of his gun collection, cradled it in his arms, and headed outside. Van threw the set of guns into his car boot, ready to drive anywhere, but didn't get in himself. He took a few weapons, perhaps four or five, from the pile, and secreted them in various pockets and holsters. Van walked quickly out of his drive, then set off running. Eventually he arrived at Ford's house. It seemed deserted, though the car was still in her drive. Van walked carefully round to the back of the house, took the key from where the Inspector had said it would be, and opened up Ford's back door. He drew an S&W 5906 from a hip holster, holding it in his uninjured left hand. Even as worried as he was now, Van could never totally banish the doubt that it could all be a trap.

Ford kept her kitchen neat and tidy, Van noticed as he entered. The next few rooms seemed much the same, there was nothing dislodged, nothing obviously wrong. Van edged through into the next room, and the one after that. He walked slowly up the stairs, pistol still in hand, then body-slammed the door at the top open. The room was in disarray. Van knew this was it. Within the messed papers and overturned chairs of this room lay the clues to the fate of Professor Jenny Ford.


	2. Chapter 2

After several hours of searching, Van felt he might be able to follow a few leads. He'd sorted the papers, arranged them, and began to get a sense of what was going on. Ford seemed to have been working on a case, the details of which were vague, but they involved the attempted assassinations on Van, dating back even to before the Loren Case. Van was surprised at how far the threads of Ford's enquiry had run. There were reports which she had copied from the police archives which pre-dated Van's close friendship with her, back when she was just the lady who sorted his files for him.

Van noticed one case in particular. It went back to just before the Loren Case, back when he was a fully-fledged Inspectorial Police Officer working internationally, with Sophia as his partner. An overseas job, that one. Van remembered that night, the car swerving aside, and one more tally mark to add to his 'close to death' list. Sophia had saved his life that time, as she had on so many other occasions. Van reached into one of his pockets with his right hand, ignoring the twinge from the not-fully healed bones, and pulled out his phone. He didn't have Sophia's number, not since the old days, but he redialled the Inspector's number. Nothing. Looked like he was on his own. Van began to gather up the papers, pushing them into his pockets.

There was the crunch of gravel outside. Van froze. He heard an engine cut out, and at least two doors open. Slowly, Van crept towards the blind on the window, re-drawing his 5906. He peered out of a gap, and saw a blue car having pulled into the driveway. Van only had time to see two men walking towards the door, wearing balaclavas, before he heard a door slam open behind him. His reflexes dulled by the meds he was still taking. Van didn't have time to fully turn before an impact slammed into him, knocking his S&W out of his hand and out of the window. Van turned and used his now free left hand to grapple with his assailant, who seemed to be dressed much as the men downstairs were, and shouting to high heaven. Van heard the men below kick the door in. He didn't have long. Weakened from his recent ordeals, he didn't have the usual physical superiority or the resilience he could usually fall back on. But that didn't mean he was defenceless.

Van pushed off his attacker, as hard as he could. It sent the man stumbling back, into the desk behind him. This gave Van the time he needed to grab a mug off the side of Ford's desk. As his attacker ran back at him, Van swung with the mug. The main body connected with the bridge of his nose, and broke. The man staggered back, dazed, and Van took the opportunity to ram the jagged edges of the handle into his eyes, one for each socket. His would-be assailant screamed and fell backwards. Van swivelled round to face the door, left hand already going for his hip holster as the door burst open and the first of the two men who had driven up to the house ran at him. Van put four rounds from his SIG into the attacker's body, and the man went down, but his dead body blocked Van's aim at the second man, giving him the chance to knock Van's gun aside. The two men grappled again, but his opponents momentum swung the fight against Van. He was driven back, towards the desk, until at last the man managed to get a forearm across Van's throat and pin him down onto the desk, throttling him. In desperation, Van's hand reached out across the table. His fingers brushed a pen. It would do. Van brought it round and hit his opponent in the side. There was a scream, and the man pulled back, nearly wrenching the pen out of Van's grip. For a pen, the effect was impressive. Van had punched a bloody hole into the man's side. Not deep enough to do any real damage, mind, but enough to cause pain. The man screeched and swung at him, but Van took it on his right arm, and aimed a blow at the bloody spot, causing his opponent to scream again. Another punch came in, but Van closed the gap, spoiling his opponent's aim, and hit him again in the same spot. This time, the man all but collapsed. Van leaned on the desk and took a moment as his opponent fell against the wall. As the man slowly regained himself, Van ratched in his pocket. His opponent finally seemed to summon his strength, the sobbing breaths in and out stopped, and he seemed to be readying himself for another rush at Van. The two looked up at each other. Then Van drew a PPK, and pointed it at his opponent. There was a brief moment of incomprehension, as if the man thought Van had broken some unwritten rule, and then he simply surrendered himself to the inevitable and collapsed. Van took a deep breath, and then fished in his pocket for his phone again, before remembering he couldn't get through. It looked like he was on his own again.


	3. Chapter 3

Van leaned over, unnaturally gentle for the first time in the two hours he'd been there, and simply pushed the chair backwards. The man tied to it fell over, limp, and crashed to the ground. He'd survive. Someone, a neighbour, would probably have heard the gunshots, and the police proper were probably on their way. Van didn't intend to be there when they arrived. He moved back. The man who'd already been inside the house, the one he'd blinded, had stopped thrashing about and blacked out some time ago, before Van could question him, and now seemed incapable of being awoken. Van's captive had been allowed to faint clean away once Van had got everything he wanted out of him. Which, admittedly, wasn't much. They'd been called up, offered lots of money – and they claimed _lots_ – to go into this house and 'clean it up', which is to say torch it. The man didn't know what his colleague had been doing already there, though apparently his mystery contacts had told him to expect to meet other operatives. Little as Van had got out of the would-be arsonist, he had a few points of note.

One: Somebody very rich didn't want anybody to find out what Ford was working on.

Two: It was all somehow linked to the assassination plots against him.

And three, Van thought as the idea just struck him, somebody had been inside Ford's house. Already inside. And had locked the door behind them. Van realised he needed to talk to the man who'd been inside. The detective leaned over, grabbed his victim by the lapels, dragged him over to the stairs and began hauling him down them. He left the other two where they were. Van manhandled the unconscious 'cleaner' out of the still-open front door, and then dragged him round behind the house. He checked the man's pulse. Still steady. Van went back into Ford's house, aware time was running out. He'd been here two hours, and, while the cops would take their time, considering the workload, he didn't want to take too long. Van ransacked the hallway, eventually upending a vase and finding what he was looking for: Ford's car keys. As he exited the front door, he noticed his S&W 5906, half-buried in the plant pot where it had landed. Van scooped it out, and shoved it in a pocket as he locked the front door with the spare key on Ford's car keyring. Once back round the back of the house, Van locked the back door and replaced the house keys under the red flower pot where he had found them. He grabbed the 'cleaner', still unconscious, and dragged him round the front, clicking Ford's car open as he did. Van threw the man into the back, and then got in the driver's seat. He fired up the car, and then drove out of the gate as fast as he could, heading back to his house. Once back, he took the man out of the back seats and handcuffed him into the back of Van's own car. Van got into the driving seat of his own car, leaving Ford's in his drive. He didn't have time to do anything with it, so he simply left it. Van had a plan now, and that meant everything not essential to his plan was being left. He started his own car up, with a boot full of guns and his captive handcuffed and strapped into his back seat, and drove. Van headed down the back roads, out of the city. He needed somewhere quiet, to think.


	4. Chapter 4

"Where is she?" Van roared, impressing even himself secretly with the terror he managed to convey in his words. The man in front of him visibly quailed. That was certainly what he'd been hoping for as a result. The man told him everything.

It had been fairly simple detective work to put together a rough guess as to what he knew and what he didn't on the drive into the countryside. One point burned at him: the man had already been inside the house, waiting for god knows how long. Two days? Long enough to have known what happened to Ford? Long enough to have been _involved_ with it? By the time Van arrived at the desolate stretch of windswept beach he wanted to hold this private interrogation-conversation at, he had worked himself into quite a fury. The his finally awake and terrified captive was only too happy to give him answers.

They'd taken her. She knew too much and they'd taken her. One of their number had known where she kept her keys. A man inside the Force? wondered Van temporarily, before reasoning they could have just kept watch on her house. And then one day when she'd been out, he'd entered her house and hidden himself. She'd come home, started work on her various projects, and he'd pounced. Chloroform over her mouth, followed by cuffs on her wrists. The work of an instant. He'd called up a number he'd been given, and some masked men had come round, taken Ford, roughed her up a bit, and then driven off with her. He'd been told to wait around in the house until he was contacted again. He didn't have anything concrete for Van, but he did have one more piece of the puzzle: the number. Van left his captive strapped into the car, took the man's phone, and got out of the car. Van walked round, and then redialled the number. He waited, phone held to his ear, wind whipping around his coat. Eventually, it rang through.

"You have reached ComsSecc. Please leave a message." Van waited, frozen. Then he vey deliberately drew his SIG. Van cocked it right next to the phone, and then hung up. ComsSecc? They were involved. A security company at best, a PMC company at worst. Van had masqueraded as a man who employed ComsSecc soldiery once, so he was more than a little familiar with their methods and reputation. But he knew what to do next. Van marched back to the car. He unhooked the safety belt, and pulled the man inside out of his car. The man looked up at him frantically.

"Run," said Van, and the man, hands still cuffed behind his back, obliged. Van got back into his car, and started the engine. He needed a bargaining chip, and his undercover work as Jean Croche had given him an idea of where to start looking for one.


	5. Chapter 5

Van paused, for just a moment, in the dark alley, to reassess his small armoury. He had exchanged his longcoat and hat for more subtle attire, a black overcoat which fell to above his knees, and a web of holsters and straps. Van slipped the suppressed Smith & Wesson SW99 out of his left-handed shoulder holster and checked the chamber. His SIG still sat in his hip holster, and he could feel the comforting weight of his spare magazines on his right hip. He was ready, or at least as ready as he could be. He was hiding just outside the ComsSecc HQ building. It was relatively lightly guarded, on the outside, but Van knew the interior would be heavily patrolled. No matter. It was personal now. Van was back, and he was angry. All the attempts on his life, all the plans made against him, and now Ford. Gone. By their hands. This was definitely personal. Van got up, a little stiffly, and moved out of the alleyway, towards the chain-link fence. He took it at a run and a jump, grasping into the wire with his fingers. Van's right arm still ached a little, but his determination overtook it and he continued to climb. At the top of the fence, a coil of razor wire blocked his path, but Van, without a pause, reached down and pulled a set of wirecutters from his pocket. Normally he would cut along the ground, but he knew that ComsSecc had sensors there, to stop that dead in its tracks. Van had simply jumped over them, and now worked judiciously to cut his way through.

Once he'd made a large enough gap in the fence, Van clambered through and jumped down, landing in the gravel on the inside of the compound. He paused, just for a second, to listen, but the lack of crunching showed he hadn't been seen. Van moved towards the main building at a run. He didn't have long. Van moved up to one of the doors, just in time to avoid a patrol of two men walking past him. He shrank into the shadows as they passed, and then clicked the door open. It was unlocked. Van slipped inside. The corridor was brightly lit, and Van squinted up at the lights as his eyes adjusted. Once that was done, he moved off towards the east wing of the building. This was where he'd find what he was looking for, he was sure. This was the Intelligence Wing. If they had anything on him, anything on Ford, it would be there.

Van reached the Intelligence Wing without incident. He'd had to avoid a few patrols, but the building schematics that had burnt into his head back in his heady days of spy work had stayed clear, and he had not taken a wrong turn yet. He opened up the door into the Intelligence Wing, also unlocked. Van moved inside. It was almost too easy. He moved over to one of the walls, and began moving down the aisles, checking each box for information, relevant keywords, anything. And then there was a click behind him. Van drew his SW99 and spun round, and as he did the lights flickered on.

It had been too easy.


	6. Chapter 6

There were seven of them, all armed. The lead man smiled at Van.

"It was all a little too easy, huh?" Van half-smiled at him, weighing up his odds. Above him, the light sparked and flickered into full life. And suddenly he knew what to do. He just had to buy a little more time. Van moved forward, keeping his pistol up, but stepping slowly, so as not to invite a bullet. Four steps. He risked a quick look up, and then looked at the seeming leader.

"I did wonder." So these were men who at least knew something about him, had been told to wait for him. Which meant he needed at least one alive for answers, to see what they knew. But he only needed one. As Van mentally calculated, the lead man stepped forward.

"Hands up, Van Helsinki, if you please," he said, pistol levelled. Van slowly raised his hands, still holding onto his SW99. And then he pulled the trigger, and dropped flat.

Van had calculated correctly. His shot hit the single light inside the Intelligence Wing, busting it. As he dropped, blackness flared into the room. The men in front of his opened fire, but, unprepared, their shots were wild and inaccurate. Van put three shots into the lead man from his prone position, then rolled sideways, behind one of the shelves. Just in time, judging from the deluge of fire which was directed towards his prior position. Van saw a gap in the shelf he was sheltering behind, and put his suppressor through it, then fired a few more times. He thought he hit another man, probably fatally, though he couldn't be sure. A guard ran around the side of the shelf, towards him, and Van drew his PPK out of his coat pocket with his right hand, and gunned him down. Van moved again, leaving the SW99 sitting in the shelf, as the apparently replacement leader of his adversaries shouted for silence. There was a pause, as both parties tried to work out where the others, friends or foes, were hiding. Van slipped up behind one of the guards, pressed his PPK up against his head, and grabbed the guard's gun hand with his right. It was a Beretta 92FS, and Van squeezed the guard's finger and the trigger in one action, shooting another guard across from his 'hostage'. Van pulled the trigger on his PPK as he did, and deftly took the Beretta from the dying guard's fingers as he fell. Another guard rounded the corner, and Van fired both Beretta and PPK until both were empty, and his opponent was dead. Van dropped both pistols, and stepped around the shelf, drawing his SIG-Sauer and putting a bullet into the forehead of one of the guards, the one he'd injured earlier. One guard left. Van paused, trying to ascertain his remaining adversary's location, but the guard bodily slammed into him before he could ready himself. Van's P228 was sent spinning from his fingers. The two men grappled on the floor. Normally, Van would have gone for a killer blow, but he needed this man alive. Instead, he tried to get away from the man, but the guard clung on. Van didn't think an alarm would have been raised, but the unsilenced gunshots probably hadn't helped.

The guard was the one to make a mistake, in the end. He rolled a little away from Van, grabbing at his hip holster and trying to extract what looked like a SIG Sauer P226 from his holster. Van recognised the 'big brother' of his issued handgun. As the guard rolled away, Van got up. The guard managed to clear the holster with his pistol, but Van was already up and kicked him in the face, knocking him down and the weapon from his hand. The guard scrambled for it, but Van drew his S&W 5906 from another inside pocket, and menaced the man with it. Van reached forward, and dragged the 226 towards him, then picked it up and slipped it inside a pocket. He continued holding the 5906 on the last surviving guard.

"I want to know what you know. I want to know who sent you, I want to know why you're here, and most of all" - and here, Van crossed the distance between him and his captive – "I want to know where my friend Professor Jenny Ford is!" The guard paled in the face of Van's anger.

"She's…she's inside one of the secure vaults. I didn't have anything to do with it. Nobody beat her, nobody tortured her, nobody even touched her. She's….she's insurance." Normally, Van would have demanded 'Against who?', but he thought he already knew the answer to that question. Instead, he reiterated his earlier line of questioning.

"Why are you here? Who sent you?" The guard seemed to be growing a little bolder.

"Nobody sent us! We got a tip-off. Anonymously. And here we are!" Van knew he was running out of time.

"You know I don't believe that." The guard drew himself up.

"Believe what you like, detective, but you'll never get it out of me!" With that, the man drew a short knife from a holster, and made a stab at Van. Van was quicker, moving by instinct. His S&W 5906 spoke twice, and the man moved no more. Van swore. That was the end of his lead. He got up, a little stiffly, and collected his guns from where they lay strewn around the room. Best to leave no real proof of his presence, despite them knowing he was going to be here. Once he had got them, he moved off. Now he had to grab Ford.


	7. Chapter 7

It took him perhaps fifteen minutes to make his way along to the secure vaults, killing whoever he needed to along the way. Van lost his S&W 5906 down a grating while grappling with a guard, and discarded his SW99 when it ran out of bullets. But his stolen SIG-Sauer P226 was out in front of him, and his P228 was still in his hip holster. Van moved along the walkway running down the middle of the two lines of vaults, checking each of the small windows into the cubicles. Behind him, faintly, he could hear indistinct noises, and, if he strained, shouting. He didn't have long. Even as he thought this, continuing to move forwards as he did, he saw her.

Ford was sitting, huddled into a near-fetal position, on the lip against the back wall. Van simply looked into the room, ascertained it was indeed her, and smacked his elbow against the door release key. It failed to move, so Van hit it with the butt of his pistol. This time the door responded, clicking backwards. Van had hoped that the security here was comparatively lax. Considering how few people ever came down here, and what they had to get through to get in, he was not surprised by how easy it had been once inside. The door clicked open. Ford looked up. The two shared a moment, just for a second, as Van stood silhouetted in the doorway, light beaming from the strip lights behind him into the darkened cell. Then Ford, slowly, got up and moved towards him.

"Van?" she asked, and it was much less weak and far less broken than he could have possibly hoped for. They hadn't broken her. Nobody could. Van, wordlessly, nodded, then reached into his pocket, and pulled out his PPK. He proffered it, grip first, to Ford.

"You know how to use one?" was all Van said. This time it was Ford's turn to nod. As Van turned to go, Ford tugged at his sleeve.

"I know what you're going to ask, but they had me on something. I don't know who they were. I barely know where I am." Van turned back to her.

"Don't worry, Jenny. We'll find them. And then we'll burn them." Van moved out of the cell, and Ford fell in wordlessly, half a step behind him and one to the right. Just like the old days. Just like before the Case. It was as if nothing had changed.

This was a fresh start.


End file.
